July 2002

Bush is Fucking This Country Up

Since our last issue, much has happened. With the climactic final week of the Supreme Court session, the impending summer recess of the United States Congress, the ever unfolding scandals in the business world, and the President's invisible and wacky war on TERROR, it is difficult to stay well informed from one day to the next. There is too much to read about!

Keeping yourself well informed is a complicated exercise. You need to read multiple traditional news sources (Grandpa reads the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, while Godzilla prefers the liberal triumvirate of the Times, The Washington Post, and NPR) and supplement that with various outside news sources, such as the BBC and alternative press, for news not necessarily hand-fed to reporters from Administration sources. Finally, you need to read web sites that compile news from different source for items that are not always on everyone's radar. You must be careful not to depend on Network news for your information. Depending on CNN, NBC or Fox'News' Network is a sure fire way to remain stupid. Fox is extra-special good at making you stupid.

But for the two of us, both rather liberal, the news makes us angry and upset. For all its pitfalls, ignorance does have at least one advantage - that bliss thing. Don't tell us you don't yearn for that good feeling. Admit it, being five was real cool. Ah, see you crave that brilliant sense of awe and warmth you felt after twirling endlessly and aimlessly through the mall as your mother was trying to purchase you fall clothing.

So what is making Godzilla and Grandpa so angry, you ask? Well, first and last on our list of grievances is the lack of effort by congressional Democrats to put the breaks on President Bush's drive to save the world from terror AND save us from that pesky Bill of Rights (accept #2, of course.) In general, since the terrorist attacks, the Democrats in Congress have acted more like a Republican Fifth column that like members of an opposition party. It's our official position that they are behaving like a bunch of pussies.

Our first and favorite example of this was in the wake of the 9th Circuit Court's decision that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance are unconstitutional. Immediately, pundits from Fox News to the Washington Times blew their stack about the audacity of the Court to make a ruling based on precedent and constitutional law instead of some preferred assumption of the character of our nation! Members of Congress called for the impeachment of the Judges. Every elected official in the Nation took the opportunity to tell the American people that they find no conflict in a government program that supported the monotheistic religious tradition - and required all American students to make a pledge to that one "God" every day. Of course, this is besides the point that we thought it was illegal, or morally dubious at least, to force people to take loyalty oaths.

In an attempt to cover themselves in the November elections, 99 of the 100 members of the US Senate voted for a proclamation in support of "under God." (Is God so shallow that he needs us to proclaim our faith at all times?) Not one Democratic member of the Senate was brave enough to vote against an infringement of civil liberties. Instead, they bowed to the powerful religious tendency in man over the clarity of the law as laid forth by the framers of the Constitution.

The Democratic Senators so much feared being linked to an ATHIEST that they would disregard a freedom laid out in the Bill-of-freakin'-Rights! Political Correctness? You bet - how strange that it is not coming from the left (if it ever has.) Just as in the days and months after the terrorist attacks, our elected officials voted out of fear rather than conviction - that is, unless you consider fear a conviction. Only pussies vote out of fear. That is not what this proud nation was found on.

"Under God" - The joke in this entire debate is that we are under God all the time anyway - pledge or not. So what exactly are we trying to prove? Is having faith in your heart not enough? It was not in 1954 when "under God" became part of the Pledge to clearly distinguish us from "godless communists" in that golden era of loyalty oaths- Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare. Why didn't God give us the power to save us from ourselves? Or are we just that stupid?

Our second bone to pick is over he Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security. Bush initially wanted to create a non-cabinet office to oversee domestic spying and flying bomb detection, but the Congress felt uneasy allowing such a vast amount of power to be used with only Executive Branch oversight. Any idiot can tell you that is a bad idea, particularly (again) the framers of the Constitution who devised the idea of "separation of power" to prevent tyranny. So, in an effort to steal headlines in the midst of his own financial scandals, the President announces the creation of a huge, new Department of Homeland Security. The department itself would be made up of some 170,000 government employees and would be a over-reaching policing agency to fight the threat of terror against Americans at home and work.

Among other things, this agency was proposed to have very little congressional oversight, which technically violates the concept of enforcement power delegated from the legislative to the executive as laid out in the Constitution. According to the President's proposal, there is no recourse for fired or laid-off employees, and no budgetary oversight. So actually, President Bush merely blew smoke up our collective asses with the creation of this Department in one of the biggest attempted Executive power grabs since Nixon. As a side note, we would also like to point out that this expansion of federal power is once again being lead by the states' right/small government republican party. How can we not think they are a just bunch of power-hungry two-faced liars?

But some members of Congress have actually noticed the potentially freewheeling (and unnecessary) agency and tried, in committee and in public, to make this new department like the others. Not surprisingly, President Bush yammered on at a press event about how the congress should not impede the President from protecting the people of the United States of America. Well, duh! In the act of spinning his point, he is asking us all to miss the point (and matter of law) of congressional (see Senate) opposition. What our friends in the Senate are trying to do is prevent the President from having unchecked power, which is ultimately more destructive than any terrorist attack. What is worse, a terrorist or a tyrant?

An example of a destructive part of the Homeland Security Department is Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System). Basically, TIPS would, as a part of Homeland Security, train thousands of people (truckers, phone repairmen, plumbers, etc.) to report any suspicious activity in an almost clever attempt to get around the whole idea of due process. The Bush Administration despises the fourth amendment above all others, it would seem.

On one level it works like some anti-crime initiatives in cities where taxi drivers agree to report any crime they witness. Since the police cannot be everywhere at once, they entrust taxi drivers, who are in many different places at one time, to act as additional eyes - not arms, just eyes. Operation TIPS can train truckers or dockworkers to be on the lookout for bad people. But TIPS does not stop at that.

Operation TIPS will employ people who you allow in your house, or to fix your car. Maybe your phone repairman will see an Muslim prayer on your wall, or a pro-Palestinian newsletter on your kitchen table. Will that get you on a database? Will that get you on a list? Will your son or sister have trouble getting a government job because your plumber heard you bad mouth the President on the phone with your friend? Are you willing to sit idly by to find out if a secretive government agency will make your life difficult?

Thankfully, the Congress (the House voted TIPS out this weekend) is making it impossible to create Operation TIPS. But in the idea itself you can see a particularly disturbing tendency of this administration. Anyone who opposes this proposal, according to President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft, is trying prevent the President from protecting the American people. Ashcroft and Bush love to claim that people are no better than terrorists if they oppose his plans. It is a destructive tendency on his part, but thanks to nearly six months of soft-spine democratic acquiescence, Bush is free to use that line freely.

What's more, the idea of the Department of Homeland Security is absurd. The miscommunication between and among the CIA and FBI before the terrorist attacks is an indicator for reform, not for a new Department to do the same damn things. (Again we will pretend to be surprised that a Republican President would create more government bureaucracy than the previous Democratic president, but then again, this President was not elected.)

The Department of Homeland Security is unnecessary. Just as with the TIPS office, when the "War on Terror" ends, it should be shut down. That is not part of the plan, of course. The President envisions an eternal struggle against 'evil'. But by creating a Cabinet level Department in the White House that has very little congressional oversight, he sets a precedent.

You see, this is all part of a systematic effort by the Republicans to demolish or simply weaken the congressional branch of Government (see House vote for irresponsible "Fast Track Trade" bill on Saturday) which, by the way, is awarded the most authority in the Constitution because of it's closer representation of all the citizenry. With the way some people in the Bush Administration talk, you would think that the Congress is a pesky and wasteful government agency in need of scaling back, like the Department of Education. The idea that he should answer to men and women elected by their constituents and not judges would seem abhorrent to this president. Be on the lookout for a very different President if the Democrats get majorities in the Congress this fall. George does not deal well with people who ask him to accept loss or even disagree with him. As we all know, he prefers cheating to winning on his strengths.